Seattle City Council Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans & Education Committee 42419

Good morning.

Today is Wednesday, April 24th, 2019, and it is 9.32 a.m.

This is a regularly scheduled meeting of the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, New Americans in Education Committee.

I'm Council Member Lorena Gonzalez, chair of this committee.

Joining me at the table are my colleagues, Council Member Teresa Mosqueva, and our newest addition to the Seattle City Council, Council Member Abel Pacheco, Jr.

Thank you for being with us.

Yeah.

This is your first committee hearing, yes?

Yes.

Well, we're going to make it really hard for you.

Thank you for being here really excited to have you join us as a member of this committee And looking forward to your contributions to the full City Council, but of course to the committee as well You have quickly ascended to becoming the vice chair of this committee.

No, you're the vice chair.

I Thought about it I There are five items on today's agenda.

First, we will consider a vote on two appointments and one reappointment to the Community Police Commission.

Following consideration of those appointments, we'll hear a report from the Office of Police Accountability as they present their 2018 annual report.

That is simply for a briefing and a discussion, nothing to vote on there.

Lastly, we will hear from the Seattle Information Technology Department, the Seattle Police Department, and the Public Defenders Association.

excuse me, about the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Program, and in particular, the response to slide 382A1, which is related to a technology need of the lead department, excuse me, of the lead program.

Again, that one is simply for briefing and discussion, no action on that particular item either.

So before we continue, we will begin our meeting with public comment as usual.

We are thankful for those members of the public who join us for public comment.

Again, as a reminder, public comment is an opportunity for members of the public to provide The members of this committee, up to two minutes of their public testimony on an item on the agenda.

This is not, unfortunately, an opportunity or a venue where we engage in conversation as members of the committee with members who are giving public testimony.

It is simply an opportunity for us to listen to those who show up.

and offer testimony.

Each individual will have up to two minutes to provide us with their public testimony.

At the end of the two minutes, the timer will turn from green to red, and the microphone will be turned off, and I will ask you to kindly wrap your comments up.

So the one and only person we have signed up for public comment today is David Haynes.

Mr. Haynes?

Good morning.

Good morning.

2012 police reform was sabotaged by Attorney General, now Mayor Durkin, when she added an unconstitutional sentence exempting drug pushers from jail.

This resulted in the cops refusing to go after and jail low life criminals, which resulted in a proliferation of junkie thieves.

Safe communities doesn't mean exempting low level drug pushers.

Safe communities doesn't mean racist cowards in Seattle's police department refusing to go after nefarious junkie thieves and their crack, meth, heroin, pushers, and enablers while conducting a war on the poor.

Safe communities doesn't mean giving millions of dollars to a non-profit who only helps drug pushers, including illegal aliens, Latinos, and Africans conducting an uncivil war on innocent community, and they get to stay out of jail.

The city council needs to wisen up to the fact Seattle is dying of societal implosion due to treasonous policies and unconstitutional agendas to prioritize housing and service for more creepy, predatory, low-level drug pushers And they're junkie thieves who are non-stop getting away with raping homeless white women, forsaken to the streets, denied housing due to racist incompetence within the social welfare industry.

I still have admiration for Lisa Dalgaard in her efforts to help us out during WTO 99. The thing is the public defender should focus on reforming the prison's cruel and unusual punishments, starting at the written justice centers above ground dungeons.

Seattle Council must realize there is no police accountability when the Community Police Commission, who is supposed to be independent and maintain the integrity of the police department, is the same person getting millions of dollars helping evil as innocence suffers.

Okay, is there anyone else in chambers who wanted to provide us with a public testimony but didn't have an opportunity to sign up?

Seeing no one, we will go ahead and close out the period of public comment, and we will begin the items of business on our agenda.

If you are here to present to the committee on agenda items one through three, which are community police commission appointments and reappointment, I would invite you to join us at the table, and Roxanna, our clerk, will read agenda items one through three into the record.

agenda items one through three appointments 1309 through 1311 appointments of Asha Mohammed as members Seattle Community Police Commission for a term to December 31st 2019 and Aaron B Goodman as member Seattle Community Police Commission for a term to December 31 2020 and reappointment of Harriet Walden as member Seattle Community Police Commission for a term to December 31st 2021 for briefing discussion and possible vote.

Great.

Thank you, Roxanna.

All right.

So, good morning to you all.

Thank you so much for being with us at the table today.

So, we will go ahead and do a quick round of introductions, just your first and last name and any affiliation should you wish to share it.

And then we will hand it over to Deputy Mayor Renathon to walk us through presentation.

Good morning.

Erin Goodman.

I'm the Executive Director of the Soto Business Improvement Area.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Asha Mohammed, the Executive Director of Somali Youth and Family Club.

Thank you.

Good morning.

I'm Shefali Ranganathan with Mayor Durkan's office.

Great.

Yes, please take us away, Deputy Mayor.

Well, it's my great pleasure this morning, Council Member Gonzalez-Mosqueda, and welcome, Council Member Pacheco, to present the mayor's nominees to the Community Police Commission.

Should I just do all three at the same time?

I think that's fine.

Yes.

Okay, so our first nominee is Erin B. Goodman.

Erin Goodman has served as the Executive Director of the Soto Business Improvement Area, representing business interests in the heart of Seattle's industrial community since its founding in 2014. And her role includes cultivating collaborations collaborative partnerships between BIA's businesses, property owners, elected officials, the city of Seattle, and community organizations.

Aaron currently serves as the chair of the South Precinct Advisory Council and is focused on building bridges between the South Precinct and the community they serve and helping to create a cohesive community voice.

I am excited to have Aaron agree to be part of the Community Police Commission.

I think we'll bring a valuable perspective from the community on that.

The second nomination is Asha Mohammed.

Asha Mohammed is, as she said, the Executive Director of the Somali Youth and Family Club.

Asha has been in Seattle for over 20 years.

20 years and is just a regular fixture in the community and has built multi-ethnic, multicultural, and multilingual spaces.

And she's a fierce advocate for reproductive justice and an ally for LGBTQ rights.

What you may not know is that Asha's mom is a police officer and also Asha being the mother of black sons and the wife to black men and sister to black men has that unique perspective of being sort of in that space where there are challenges working with law enforcement and will bring that incredible voice to the Community Police Commission.

Our final reappointment, and she is not here but needs no introduction, is Reverend Harriet Walden.

Reverend Walden has been on the Community Police Commission ever since its founding, and we are pleased to re-nominate her to continue to serve on the Police Commission.

great.

Thank you so much, Deputy Mayor.

I really appreciate that presentation and just for the viewing public and for the benefit of Councilmember Pacheco, usually with reappointments we don't require the nominees who are being reappointed to be present at the committee table for reappointment purposes, so that's why Reverend Walden isn't here, but our two new appointees for consideration are with us, and this is an opportunity for us to ask them questions about both their interest and and intense in terms of what they would like to accomplish as a member of the Community Police Commission.

So I'll go ahead and start the questions, and then if there are any follow-ups, I'll hand it over to my colleagues to be able to ask some of those follow-ups.

So thank you both for your willingness to be here with us this morning, and of course for your willingness to participate on the Community Police Commission, which is a really vital, important part of our overall efforts to ensure that the voices of a diverse set of community members and representatives are present within the accountability system as a whole, which is increasingly becoming more civilianized.

So I would like to just provide each of you an opportunity to introduce yourselves to us in your own words and to perhaps share with us a little bit about why you are interested in serving on the Community Police Commission.

And if you have a sense of what you'd like to work on, I'd be interested in hearing that as well.

So Erin, we'll start with you.

Well, I am a South Seattle native.

I've grown up in Seattle and now have the opportunity to represent a South Seattle neighborhood.

And the process that I've seen in growing up is a fracturing between relationships, and in Soto, public safety is our number one concern.

We've discussed this on numerous occasions, and I truly believe in the mission of the Community Police Commission that community and SPD align towards common goals, and that we can have good, strong, constitutional policing that's also ensuring public safety.

So when the opportunity came to be a part of this commission and to provide a business voice and understanding of what the businesses that employ the people that are in the South Precinct and to share that in this conversation, it seemed like an important thing to do.

Coming into this, this commission is going to be very different when we sit down, when it sits down in May.

And so understanding the roles of what is worked on, but I think that building the relationship, building so that we can have a good, strong police force that is aligned with community values is what I'd like to be working on.

Great.

Any questions for Ms. Goodman before we move on?

Or would you like to, why don't we go through the full presentation and then we'll do some follow-up questions.

So, Ms. Mohamed.

Hi.

Why do I want to be a police commissioner?

Honestly, because I was really mad.

The worst I can remember was a couple of months ago.

I just received this random email from the CPC, the Community Police Commission, and it was regarding about the police contract negotiation.

I consider myself to be a pretty intelligent person and really understand the ins and out of system and how they are.

But in that meeting, it felt there was no interpretation.

There were elders and things were just happening, you know, just fast.

There was no integration.

We were not part of the process.

And when I say we, I'm talking about people that English is not their first language.

And so I decided to do something about it.

So that's why I'm here.

What I would like to accomplish is actually to be part of the conversation at a community level.

And most of the time, whenever there is a relationship with SPD or anything, is when a tragedy happens or when conflict is happening.

Or we have these photo ops where an elected official, they come and it's like, yay, you know, the usual folks.

But for me, I think it's more about the integrity.

I also hear that for most immigrants or refugees, their experience has been that the police were corrupt.

Actually, my mother was a police officer.

Her brother was murdered by a police officer, and she still chose to become a police officer because she truly believes that people that don't have the means needed protection and needed to be served.

And I take that to my core.

And so anyone that is wearing a uniform is not going to see me just as a one-off, but really part of a community.

and making sure that I provide that uberness to take the police to the community and the community to the police.

So that's what I'm trying to achieve.

Great.

Thank you so much.

Well, I've had an opportunity to work with both of you in the past.

I think the last time we really had an opportunity to work together was as members of the search committee for the new chief of police.

And of course, we ended up with now Chief Carmen Best.

So we've had an opportunity to really see how both of you work in a larger group setting and appreciate the balance that I think you bring into conversations around sort of recognizing how to center the priorities around equity.

and the importance of constitutional policing and making sure that when officers do violate policy that we have the best systems in place to make sure that those officers are held accountable.

But I think both of you also have expressed a perspective around making sure that we're also supporting law enforcement that is doing a good job and making sure that we are sharing those stories within community is a broader set of community to make sure that there's a good fluidity in terms of information sharing and that we continue to work on building those relationships.

So I've had a lot of chance to work with these two fine nominees and of course we've all read their materials but wanted to open up the opportunity for my colleagues to ask any follow-up questions.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Welcome.

Good to see you both.

Someone asked you the same question that we asked the table last time we were doing the nomination process.

I'd love to hear more about what accountability means to you and who you're accountable to.

accountability is when your words match your actions in a transparent way.

And that holds true whether it's for an individual or for an organization.

In my role in my life, I'm accountable to my family, I'm accountable to my community, and I'm accountable to the people of Soto.

And Soto is a unique beast.

We don't have residents.

So our elected representation is very split.

And so to some respects, I serve, not elected, as this sort of coalescing voice for the people who are every day there working, who are not big business, who are not, we have that too, I'm not, but for the majority of the folks who don't have time to deal with navigating government and all of that, that's why I sit here today is to amplify their voices.

I think accountability, personally for me, it's impact, either negative or positive.

The ability to measure what is the impact that has been done, the intentionality of the process, and in that intentionality, what impact has had, good or bad, and taking accountability for that.

I think that is a great question.

Thank you so much for that.

It is kind of a hard question and I think it really speaks to both of your answers.

We are trying to ensure there is accountability in the community and accountability for officers to meet our new requirements.

You mentioned SOTO and we have had a chance to hear from you.

I have spent a lot of time there lately, and I've seen some of the things that you've talked about at this table in real life over the last two months or so, and happy to come down and chat with you more.

But you mentioned Soto specifically.

Do you mind elaborating just a little bit more what communities specifically in Seattle do you kind of see yourself held accountable to?

I think that's actually why I really want this position because I think there is a falsehood of saying that I will be held accountable by a community.

I think I am held accountable by the CPC, the body that I am part of.

But if we want to talk about ethnicity or groups that I could tap into, the East African community, particularly the Somali American community, the Kenyan community, I speak about seven languages.

I'm very confident in four, but I'm part of all those communities.

You're such an underachiever.

And this whole culture of bragging is really uncomfortable, I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So my community is the folks that are experiencing homelessness.

That's my community.

And funny enough, my office is in Soto.

Works, new works.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Very helpful.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Council Member Mosqueda?

Okay.

Council Member Pacheco?

I don't have any questions, but just want to say thank you both for willingness to serve.

So much appreciated.

Thank you for your willingness to serve.

Sure.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you.

So one of the questions that we're interested in is how has your previous work to inform the type of work or your approach to work that you would pursue on the CPC?

So for you with the Somali Youth and Family Club, how has that informed the change you hope to make at the CPC?

And then obviously the work that you've done through the SOTO-BIA.

I'd be interested in hearing what you've kind of learned in those experiences and how you hope to bring some of that to the CPC.

Okay, let me go for it.

I just became the executive director about four months ago.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

But I'd really would like to talk about lived experience.

When I came to this country, I had a nationality.

As I lived in the United States, I became a color.

Then my faith became another label.

So I carry a lot of labels in that sense.

And it was quite a learning curve to carry all those label and be a person at the same time.

But what informs my work is my lived experience.

I was hired at the King County as a project manager for the first three months.

The security guard was guarding me to show that I actually worked in the building.

In my neighborhood in West Seattle, the target that I go to, Every now and then, you know, the police will actually pull over and just take a random check at my plate or whatever.

So those are the things that inform me.

So when I have community members or people that are experiencing trauma, you know, interacting with police, I can relate to, not as severe as a person that is experiencing homelessness, not as severe as someone that is having a mental episode, not as severe as somebody that is experiencing domestic violence, not as severe as someone that is undocumented and feels that they need help.

Not to that extent, but I can relate.

Thank you, Asha.

So in my role in Soto, I am often the first call.

And so that means that I am on the ground with a business owner when they are dealing with a crisis, when their employees, and there have been a number that we've worked on.

even in the last year of a woman who was mauled by a dog and all of that.

So we work closely with the businesses, but we also work closely with SPD.

And so I bring the opportunity to share the insight of not the police, but of David, and Mark, and Kevin, and how we work together to help the people that are in our neighborhoods, but then also understand that as we see each other, both sides, as human beings and people, the entire is stronger.

And so, coming from Soto, I have a pretty much daily interaction with SPD, and while I am very conscious of the way I look and present, that.

And so I have the experience through a window into another experience as well.

So I bring that as well.

No?

We're good.

Okay.

I really want to thank you both for being with us this morning again.

I really appreciate your willingness to share with us a little bit more about yourselves personally and some of the experiences I think you'll bring here.

I think, you know, when we look at the Community Police Commission, it's important for us to make sure that we are true to what we're trying to accomplish there.

which is having a really diverse set of voices to make sure that, again, at the root of it, everybody understands that first and foremost, the first priority is to maintain fidelity to the consent decree and the obligations of the CPC to the components of the consent decree that are directly related to making sure that there is an intentional, deliberate intent to reduce the use of force, particularly as it relates to the use of force on communities of color.

And so obviously there's the issues related to bias policing as well.

Those are components that I think need to continue to drive the Community Police Commission.

But there's a whole host of other things that the CPC, as it now enters into a stage of permanency and getting to a larger scale, there are other areas of really important interest that still are very important towards continuing to build public trust in law enforcement.

And, of course, that includes the discipline system, which we spend a lot of time talking about.

But there are also other components that help to promote and build that public trust.

And that includes, in my mind, issues related to public safety, how the police department engages in response to the most vulnerable members of our community.

including people experiencing homelessness.

And I think that those are all perspectives that both of you are going to bring to this particular room that are really important.

And I know there are several members of the Community Police Commission.

you know, going back to its inception, that have been really focused on not forgetting about how public safety and the delivery of constitutional public safety is a fundamental building block to continuing to build and restore trust between communities and the police.

So I really appreciate your willingness to serve.

It is going to be a lot of time, and I hope that you all are ready to spend all that time.

I will tell you from my perspective, and I think that the CPC would echo this, is that they are very interested in having a full commission because the work is so important and so critical, and we're at a really important juncture.

But that also means showing up at 110% and making sure that you're there to engage fully with the work of the CPC, because it is so important to the city.

So really appreciate your all's willingness to sign up for that task.

OK.

Any other comments before we close?

All right.

We are going to move to advance these.

appointments, as soon as I find the words that I'm supposed to say.

All right.

So I move that the committee recommend the City Council confirm appointments 1309 through 1311 to the Seattle Community Police Commission.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any further discussion?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any nos?

Okay.

The committee recommends that the City Council confirm appointments 1309 through 1311 with a unanimous vote.

The appointments and reappointment will be considered by the council at its meeting on Monday, April 29th at 2 p.m.

You are not required to attend full council on the 29th of April, but of course you are always welcome to join us.

So I suspect that it will be fine.

Thank you both for joining us and thank you Deputy Mayor for being with us as well.

Two weeks in a row.

All right, so we are going to move into agenda item four, which is a report from the Office of Police Accountability on their 2018 annual report.

So I'm going to ask that those folks join us at the table.

And our clerk, Roxanna, is going to read this item into the record.

Agenda item four, Office of Police Accountability 2018 annual report for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, Roxanna.

OK, so I think there's a presentation.

Do you all have a presentation?

We do.

There it is.

OK.

We will go ahead and begin, as we usually do, with a round of introductions.

So tell us who you are.

And then, Andrew, you want to, you're going to kick us off.

Yes.

Andrew Meyerberg, Director of the Office of Police Accountability.

Monique Guevara, Policy Analyst.

Hi, I'm Anne Bettisworth, Deputy Director of Public Affairs.

Lauren Caputo, Management Systems Analyst.

Well, thank you all so much for being with us.

Director Meyerberg, you've done a fantastic job of hiring all of the most amazing women in the city.

I've been lucky.

So thank you for having us here.

And hopefully you've had a chance to read the report.

What we're hoping to do today is to go through some of what we feel are the high points.

Obviously, any questions you have, we're willing to answer anything.

And please interrupt us at any time.

Before I get going.

I just wanted to do you have a question, okay I just want to say thank you.

You've been very very responsive when we've gotten questions or emails And I've had to reach out to you and just ask about the process and timeline immediately.

He's sent us an email back So I just want to say thank you team.

Obviously, it takes a team approach to track all the issues and the timelines associated but as our community gets used to having a police accountability office I'm really excited there are both reaching out to you and the response in which you have provided to our office and community.

I appreciate that and following up on that you know one of the things we've done in response to some of those emails is now we've instituted a 48-hour response rule.

So I mean for for us you know generally we try to respond as quick as we can.

But just for staffing, like I said to you, we have 500 investigations a year, so it's hard to have proactive updates.

But I think now what I've asked the sergeants and the others to do in the office is if someone's emailing us, really, we need to get back to them within 48 hours.

Even if just to say, we're moving forward and we have no updates.

I think that's the right thing to do.

So I appreciate that.

Yeah, of course.

So I just wanted to say a couple things before we get going.

You know, from our perspective, this has been a really significant year for us at OPA.

We've been focused on building both internal and external trust and confidence.

Ann's going to talk about this a little bit later in the presentation.

And I think what that's been looking like is, is understanding that there's a lot of confusion about the work that we do, understanding that, you know, a lot of people don't trust that the accountability system works.

And when I say a lot of people, I mean both police officers themselves and community members.

I think we hear a lot.

I've, you know, gone to roll calls and ride-alongs and spoken to as many officers as I can.

I think what we've seen is historically they don't believe that OPA works.

They believe that it's biased, just like I think sometimes people in the community feel like, you know, how could this ever work for us because it's part of a system.

So we've really been focused on trying to break down some of those walls and to build up those trust levels.

And again, Anne will talk about what we've been practically doing, because I know that sounds good, but we actually have to try to do something.

So we'll talk a little bit about that later.

We've also been trying to improve literally everything that we do from top to bottom.

This report is a really good example.

You know, I think we look at this report as certainly the best report that we've done since Ann and I have been in OPA, and I think probably one of the best reports that we've done at OPA.

It's just our data's cleaner, and I think a lot of it's the accountability ordinance, too, which is having us look at data in different ways.

It's been really helpful.

So I think this is a really good report to show what we're doing and how we're doing it.

So, and again, that's great work.

Lauren, Monique, and Anne's part.

Lastly, I just wanted to say thank you to staff.

As you all know, we're a hybrid organization.

We have both civilian staff and sworn staff.

Here we have civilians, but really we're a team and we all work together.

As part of the ordinance, we're required to civilianize all of our supervisors.

And I think it was 18 months from effective date of the ordinance to when we had to do it, and that's coming up.

So on May 31st, we will civilianize finally all of our supervisors.

It'll be bittersweet.

I think the two supervisors we have, Yvonne Underwood, who's our acting captain, and Tom Ovens, our lieutenant.

have been really wonderful components and parts of OPA.

So it's going to be sad to say goodbye to them.

But it's a change that's coming and we're excited for the future.

So without further ado.

So the first slide that we have shows that our complaints are down 11% from last year to this year.

So when we say complaints, it's a term of art.

What we mean is an actual allegation of misconduct on the part of a police officer.

So we receive other things like, you know, people may contact us looking for an arrest report or they may contact us saying, you know, I want, you know, to give accommodation to an officer.

We log that as a contact, but it's not a complaint against an officer.

So looking at actual complaints, we're down about, you know, about 100 and change from 2017. I don't know that there's any statistical validity or any merit to that.

I think, you know, our complaints do ebb and flow, but, you know, it's just what we're seeing this year.

What we see are that about 55% come from external sources, meaning the community.

And this really can be anyone out there.

It could be a community member, it could also be the mayor's office, other city agencies, other law enforcement agencies.

the city's Customer Service Bureau But that's 55% 45% which is a really interesting statistic are from SPD So internal referrals and this is up from last year last year.

We it was 33% So we're up 12% Which is pretty significant

And Director Meyer, is there a way for you to attribute why there was such an increase?

You said a 12% increase?

You know, I don't have a sense of why.

I don't think we do.

I don't know if anyone else, and if you do or anyone else here, I don't know that we do have a sense as to why.

I mean, that is a significant increase.

I mean, the other thing is we don't know Obviously, we have robust data reporting in SPD, right?

It's really if you see something, say something in SPD.

There's pretty strict requirements for reporting misconduct, but that wouldn't necessarily explain the 12% increase.

Those policies haven't necessarily changed.

So we don't know.

But also the data is not particularly clean going back past 2017. So I don't know that we would know if 2016, for example, it was closer to 45%.

I mean, really all we have is the 2017 data to compare it to.

Does that make sense?

Yes, I have a couple of questions for you.

So how does the data point around a 45%...

We're at 45% of complaints initiated by or forwarded from the Seattle Police Department to OPA.

How does that compare to pre-consent decree?

That's a good point.

We don't know.

Because of the data?

The data.

It's up quite a bit.

We have some historical data from the past that's not as clean, but in general it shows that it increased significantly with the consent decree because of the consent decree's requirements and the requirements that all misconduct be forwarded to OPA, not just serious misconduct.

And I think so.

I mean, that's a good point.

I mean, I think what we saw, so post-consent decree, really what happened was everything flipped, where all misconduct got reported to OPA.

So things that were handled with line investigations in the past were no longer handled with line investigations.

And line investigations just means that the chain of command, the supervisors or the officers were doing the workup of the case and the investigation of the case.

So I think it's easy for us to really focus on the just technical pieces around the statistics and percentage and points increase and all that stuff.

But I would be interested in hearing from you based on, collectively from all of you, the work that you've been doing in this space, what this statistic is actually telling us.

Why does this matter?

I mean, I think it matters.

It's a good question.

You know, what we're going to talk about a little bit later.

I always ask good questions.

I know, I know.

That's a hard question.

Ones that we don't think about, right?

So, an interesting fact that we'll talk about later, or statistics we'll talk about later, is that 72% of the cases that we actually investigated are these 45%, if that makes sense.

Yes.

So, an outsized number of our investigations come from those referrals.

You know, I don't know, I don't really know what it means.

I think what it means is that sergeants and supervisors are taking their responsibilities seriously under policy, right?

And sometimes, though, I think that they may be taking it too seriously.

And what I mean by that is that there may be some over-referrals in that there are matters that could have been handled by the chain of command that were sent to OPA.

where maybe they should have been handled at the end.

So I don't know that it's a positive or negative number.

I think certainly it is good that all bias, all force, all search and seizure violations, all serious misconduct is being referred to OPA.

But I don't know that there's a qualitative you know, conclusion that I can reach as far as this number goes.

Andrew, can I just add that I think it's important for the public to know that this many complaints are being referred.

I think often the public may think that, you know, misconduct that's happening in the field is being hidden or kept there, when in fact the opposite is true and they're referring a lot of misconduct or potential policy violations that may not even be policy violations to OPA.

So it's, I think it's a good thing for the public to understand that there is quite a system of accountability here.

There's a page in the report, page 10 of the report, that breaks down the demographics of the complainants.

And it's a little unclear to me, and I admittedly did not read the footnotes, so perhaps there is explanation in the footnotes that I have missed.

But in that figure five that talks about the complainant, races as a percent of total known races for all complaints.

I'm assuming that that includes both internal and external complainants.

Yes, that's what it means.

OPA is mandated per the ordinance and Seattle Municipal Code to report on the voluntarily provided races of our complainants, so that's why we present two different figures.

So on page 10, it's showing all known races of complainants, whether it's received internally, which would be forwarded through our SPD supervisors, or if it's externally, so like web complaint form, phone calls, in-office complaints.

So,

In tracking the information about the complainants, do you also have some more granular detail that separates the internal from the external?

As far as the races of complainants?

Yeah, I mean, we have a very white police force, and so I am curious about what the racial distribution of the complainants looks like when we segregate the internal complaints from the complaints that we're receiving from the public.

I see your point.

Your point is...

You've included police officers in this demographic data point.

Yes.

I want to see this data point sans police officers or anybody else who's internal.

So complaints that originate internally, so if somebody is complaining during an arrest of, I mean, any allegation, bias, force, we are seeing that the complaints, the complainant races that are voluntarily provided are more likely to be white whether if they're doing it online.

So external complaints, there's a higher proportion of white complainants as opposed to internal complaints that are forwarded through SPD.

It's 36% African American compared to externally it was 18%.

And what we can do is, you know, I think obviously a gap that you've identified is why, right?

I mean, so I think that's something that we can do is to look at the why.

You know, we, this was a, actually this was a, two charts and slides that we discussed kind of at length internally.

And it's certainly interesting.

I mean, if you look at figure five, I mean, the percentage for black and African American is significantly higher than in the population in Seattle.

And the question is, we don't necessarily know the why, but certainly we can look at it.

And if this is something that you're interested in, we can get back to you with the...

I mean, and it's not necessarily a bad thing if what is occurring is that we're being much more effective in educating members of communities that have historically experienced a more negative interaction with law enforcement, how to actually lodge a complaint, that's a good result.

But if there's some other kind of disproportionality that we're not seeing, because we're not asking the questions about the why, why are we seeing this sort of demographic split?

I think it would be important for.

to be asking those questions, to identify whether this is a result of better education and better access to the resources people need to know when there could be a violation and where they go when there is one versus, well, we're seeing an uptick in complaints from this particular demographic because they're being subjected to more alleged misconduct.

Right, that's a good point.

That's definitely something that's hard to prove or to draw concrete conclusions to, but it's something we can dig into a little further, perhaps in a special report or some sort of issue analysis.

I have a high level of confidence in each of your intellects, so I trust that you'll be able to do a rigorous policy analysis around that question.

Council Member Esqueda?

Some sarcasm.

I'm being honest.

I'm just being cheeky in my tone.

I apologize.

Councilmember Mosqueda.

Thank you so much So I'm interested in the frame that you teed up a moment ago around the number of complaints coming from or originating within SPD the comment that some of these complaints potentially could have been dealt with by the chain of command and I think that's a good point.

I think that's a good point.

One thing that we've been working on as far as innovation goes and building internal accountability is to start empowering supervisors to handle minor misconduct.

SPD right now is working with the, you know, DOJ and the monitoring team on reworking some of the policies to make clear that supervisors can handle minor misconduct.

And what I mean by minor misconduct, it's not use of force, it's not bias, but it's, you know, whenever we stop someone on the street, right, we need to do what's called a Terry template, right?

It's just a document that talks through the basis for the stop, the weather, you know, what you saw, what they were wearing, and so on and so forth, right?

Sometimes we have officers that forget to do them, right?

Those cases have been sent to OPA, right?

So we're doing a full investigation on whether or not someone did the appropriate paperwork.

From my perspective at OPA, and certainly I think this perspective is shared, you know, across the accountability spectrum, is that those matters are better left for a supervisor, right?

The supervisor can deal with it at day one to talk to the officer, to counsel the officer, to say, remember, you need to do this, to teach, mentor, counsel, as opposed to discipline.

We've seen that that can be more effective.

And I think that with the right training and with the right support from both OPA and the system, that that could be a huge benefit resource-wise to us, letting us focus on more serious cases, but while maintaining accountability.

We'll still have eyes on all of these things.

Certainly, we'll, you know, all these chain of command reviews we're going to see on the back end.

And the Office of Inspector General will be auditing them as well.

We've asked them to make that part of their work plan.

So, but I think our system needs to move, in my opinion, towards that.

OPA cannot be the crutch for the police department.

They have to own their own system.

They have to own their own accountability.

Supervisors have to be responsible for their people.

And certainly for this minor misconduct.

So I guess that that's what I'm saying.

And I don't think it's a lack of training.

I mean, I think the sergeants are doing exactly what they're trained to do, right?

They're sending everything to us.

What we're saying to them is that, you know, let's train you to think about it a little bit differently, right?

Let's train you to teach better, to counsel better, to be more critical about evaluating what was actually alleged, to work things up more in your reviews before you send it to us.

Like, don't just send things to OPA and expect that we're going to do your work for you.

You do the work.

We'll help you.

You know, we'll support you.

We'll offer you advice on how you can do it better, but they need to do the work.

And I don't want it to sound like we're abdicating responsibility.

We're not.

We're still going to be investigating a high number of cases, and certainly every allegation of serious misconduct that we get, we're going to look at, right?

But one of the things we've seen, and it's been in the news, you know, is, you know, Officer Morrell and Officer...

Resilience, you know, it is a fact that there is a high number of OPA complaints right now.

It's a fact.

And I think some of it is an unintended consequence of the really strict reporting, right?

You know, every bias, every force, you know, is reported.

We have to, by our ordinance, by our operating manual, to investigate them, right?

So what it ends up doing is you have officers that can receive 10 complaints in a 12 or 15 month period.

That's a lot.

These officers take these cases very seriously.

It weighs on them.

It's a balance.

We're trying to figure out how to do it better, and that's what I was saying about innovation.

We have one of the best systems in the country.

I firmly believe that, but it can be better.

And I think some of the nuances is what we're trying to work out now.

And I think the supervisor handling a misconduct is a big one for us.

And that'll be a huge piece of 2019's work.

You know, what Ann will talk about a little bit later is that we did about, how many hours, 300 hours of sergeant's training this year, where I went to and with Anne and with others went and met with all the sergeants to talk them through exactly this, is this is what the resource we can be for you at OPA.

This is how we can support you.

This is how we can make you better.

And I think they've seen that it has made them better.

So I hope that answers your question.

I'm going to move us along because we have 11 minutes and several slides to go through.

So I'll quickly run through some of these other slides.

So here, this is interesting from our perspective because it shows that, and I think this is what we knew anecdotally, but it shows that officers between one to four years, or officers with at least less experience, had the most complaints.

And we think this is due to a couple reasons.

First, they've just gotten off of their field training and probationary periods.

They're alone.

Usually they're working high action shifts, like a third watch west, third watch east, third watch north.

So they just see more They're more active.

So that's they get more complaints What we saw I know what third watches public may not and my colleagues may also not know what third watches So SPD divides it shifts into three what they call watches first watch is basically from 4 a.m.

Until around 11 the next shift is from 11 to 7 or 11 to 8 and the next is from 8 to 4 so third watches from 8 p.m.

To 4 a.m.

And and it's probably not a surprise that a lot of the a lot of uses of force biased fit call-outs all occur force investigation team call-outs all occur during that period of time What we've also seen though I don't remember last year we saw that there was a peak from year 7 to 9 there was just blip and for officers receiving more complaints.

And I think what we've realized, and this is, I think, good work on Lauren's part, was that it also correlates to hiring.

So from that seven to nine-year period, now eight to ten, see it followed, is that we had a hiring surge at SPD.

Similarly, this huge peak here from around year two correlates to a 2016 hiring peak.

So I think we've tracked that down, which now makes sense, but we didn't know quite why that was the case before.

So, again, probably not a surprise.

This is where we're seeing the most complaints originating from.

You know, west and north precincts get the highest.

West, I think, because of how dense it is and how many people are in and out of that area on any given day.

North, just because of sheer size.

So, and if you look in the downtown core, that's really the highest concentration of our complaints.

The most common allegations of misconduct, and this is pretty consistent from year to year, are force, bias, and professionalism.

Force and bias are mandatory reports, and we were talking about this a little bit earlier.

Sergeants and supervisors, and frankly even officers, have to report to a supervisor and then to OPA any allegation of excessive force and biased policing.

Professionalism is interesting because it's much more of a subjective allegation.

I would say, anecdotally, professionalism is one that OPA generally adds when we review the case.

If we review video, we might see things that we think were inappropriate, so we'll add professionalism.

And those are things like rudeness or?

Rudeness, you know, things that we think undermine the trust in the department, those types of things.

So cases that we classified for investigation, so our investigations increased 10% from 2017 to 2018. So last year we investigated 519 cases, which was I think by far the highest amount that we have investigated in recent years.

I think this is largely attributed to that we're classifying less cases for contact logs.

So a contact log is when we get a complaint and we close it out really without any further action.

So it's either, you know, we don't think there's a plausible allegation of misconduct or there's some other reason why we're not going to conduct a full investigation.

When I joined OPA, this was a big criticism of both Ann Levinson and of Tita Rodriguez, both OPA auditors.

They felt that OPA was misusing contact logs and that they were overusing it.

So, that was a shift that I put in right when I started was that we stopped doing that.

So, I think what you've seen though is that it's ended up in more investigations, which I don't think is a negative.

I think it's a positive.

And the next highest level, so after contact logs, which is still fairly high, the next highest is a supervisor action where we send a case back to the supervisors because it's a minor performance issue and say, please address this minor performance issue, but we don't do a full investigation.

Oh, will you go back real quick, Anne, sorry.

And what I was talking about before, Council Member, the 72%, so of those investigations, 72% came from those internal SPD referrals.

Yeah, it's a pretty high number.

Yeah, it's a high number.

And it's not, but that's not surprising at the same time because the most serious allegations are going to come through those supervisors.

You're going to be vetted through those supervisors.

So it's not, it's actually not that surprising that that's the case.

And then, Director Meyerberg, on that statistic around mediation being seven, that's under the old system, not the new, or what will eventually be a new system.

As you're aware, we are really top to bottom revamping our mediation.

We've met with your staff, we've met with the CPC, and really we've kind of met with whoever we can meet with to try to make this better.

Monique, do you want to just do a quick overview of kind of what we're trying to do?

Yeah, we're trying to strengthen and institutionalize the current mediation program.

So we've done a bit of research on best practices.

We've done an assessment of OPA's program over the last two years.

And we've graded the program so that we know the areas that we need to strengthen.

We, as Andrew has mentioned, we have been presenting this to all of our stakeholders.

And at some point, I think around June, we will create a new revised program guideline and roll this out appropriately and share for another commentary period.

And our goal is certainly that seven is too low.

You know, mediation, I think what we've seen is mediation's an incredible tool.

You know, the issue obviously is it has to be voluntary.

You need the complainant and the officers to both agree.

But, you know, really I think we graded ourselves and we gave ourselves some low grades in some areas.

But we need to do a better job at making it officers aware.

You know, whether working with the unions or working with command staff, you know, we have to sell this program to make officers want to do it.

And we will make sure that once we have a better sense of where the program is going to be, we'll make sure to invite you all back to have a conversation about the revamped model for the mediation program.

I do agree that it is a potentially powerful tool that could really be restorative for everybody involved.

And I'm looking forward to seeing it be successful.

For this slide, I think you can see that in 21% of cases, OPA recommended one or more sustained findings.

That means that we said that an officer had violated policy.

So, that is lower than 2017, where I think the percentage was 28%?

Not positive.

Okay.

And now we're, but it's in line with past years.

So, this number again will fluctuate.

It really, I don't know if there's any qualitative information that we can provide to you, but it depends on the cases, depends what we're seeing.

Council Member Muscata.

21% of the cases that came into your office had a sustained finding?

Just to the, sorry, of investigations.

So of the, right.

Investigations, okay.

So, right.

Gotcha, okay.

And just to clarify, in 2017, it was 18%.

OK, thanks.

Otherwise, if you just assumed it was 21% of the whole pie, that would be very...

Well, I was going to say it seemed very low.

Well, I think comparatively, if you look at other agencies across the country, we've done anecdotal looks, it's probably on the higher end, I would say.

And, you know, the thing that's on the higher end is, you know, we obviously, we recommend findings.

We can't compel findings.

I recommend them to the chief of police.

And the chief decides, finally, whether or not to agree with my recommendation.

The chief has reversed me, I think, in 2018 three times.

which is really low comparatively, you know, in most other jurisdictions.

It's significantly higher, I think in the 15, 17, 20% range.

So I think that's another positive of the system and showing the system is working in my mind.

So, as you all may be aware, we are governed by an 180 day timeline for our investigations that comes from the collective bargaining agreements.

There's a lot of exceptions and rules as to when it runs from, but generally it runs, the way we look at it is we have 180 days from the date of the incident to when we issue our recommended findings.

And then, Andrew, that's, because this is a 2018 report, so this is reflective of the on-time statistic is reflective of the 180-day time as it existed in the previous collective bargaining agreement.

Yes, so it would be the previous CBA.

I mean, it likely won't significantly change as far as the new CBA goes.

I mean, just, you know, in order to ensure that we can maintain discipline if we're recommending sustained findings, we largely run it from the date of the incident just to be careful.

So, this is a really important number for us.

You know, one of the things, when I first came in to OPA, The 180 day was was only really applied for sustained cases So if they thought there's gonna be a sustained finding they got it done within the 180 day But almost all other cases were done outside of the 180 day period And I viewed that as problematic because you know, obviously there's a complainant in an officer on both sides of that case and It's important to get things done in a timely fashion.

So now, every case is done within the 180 days.

So no matter whether it's sustained or not sustained, it's done within the 180 day.

Obviously, we're not perfect.

We're still going for 100%.

94% is good.

It's really a tribute to the sergeants and the supervisors.

And of that 94%, it's important to note that the 6% that were not timely, first, there was only one case which would have been sustained.

That case, though, the reason it was not sustained was because of the statute of limitations.

It was done within the 180 days, just the conduct occurred more than three years ago.

So I said it was not sustained timeliness for that reason.

But of that 6%, some of these are also cases that we're still finishing up from the past administration.

So there's some cases from 2016, 2017 that we want to get everything done, but that goes into that 6%.

So I think we're going to be significantly higher next year, I think probably 96, 97, 98 percent.

So, which is where we want to be.

You want to just?

Yeah.

So, management actions are a tool that Andrew has on issuing findings where there are perhaps gaps or ambiguities or other problems with SPD policy.

So, it basically means that Andrew is not holding the officer accountable for the action, but rather is holding the policy accountable, perhaps the policy was poorly written or was unclear.

So in those cases, Andrew can issue a management action recommendation.

In 2018, we issued 30 management action recommendations on unique topics and 75 total management action recommendations.

Some of those were duplicative.

And that's on, just for my colleagues who have the report in front of them, that those management action recommendations are reflected in Appendix A of the annual report.

Yes, that's correct.

starting on page 30.

Of the 30 unique topics, 13 of them were implemented completely or partially by SPD in 2018, and 33% they declined action, and 23% are still in progress.

A lot of these take quite a while to implement.

They're policy changes that take a while, so a lot of them have not yet been able to be addressed.

Oh, yes, Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you so much for pointing this out.

So I was thinking, as you mentioned, that every case you have to investigate that's very similar to labor standards violations.

At the state level, you know, we have a law that says every single wage theft complaint has to be investigated, but really there's patterns, right?

And so we really push the department there to do director-initiated investigations.

by way of the MARs, you really are already doing these director initiated investigations based on patterns that you've seen to push policy change.

Is that accurate?

And I think that's what we do.

And I think also what we, one of the things is, you know, there's times that we'll investigate a case, right?

And something may have gone wrong, right?

But it went wrong because there was a gap in policy or there was no training, right?

And that's what we try to do, too.

I mean, our whole purpose, what we're trying to do is, how do we correct it, right?

How do we ensure that something doesn't happen again?

And I think we use, like you were saying, we use the management actions and those policy recommendations to affirmatively do that.

Because again, you know, maybe it's the department's issue, not the officer's.

And why hold the officer accountable if they're not being supported by a policy or training?

So that's our philosophy.

And I think it's been really a valuable tool.

And you could almost crosswalk the list in Appendix A with the chart on page 15 of the allegations to see where your recommendations correspond with the highest type of violations.

And we're always happy to give you, you know, we can provide the actual recommendations to you if you want to see them and talk you through whatever you need.

But thank you.

I think it's an important tool, especially to make sure that you're relieving your staff of the, you know, the need to go down the rabbit hole every single time when you see these patterns.

So that's great.

And this is a really important concept and I want to thank the Community Police Commission in particular.

I think it was Lisa Dugard who really hammered me in the police accountability legislation process that this really needed to be legislated and included as part of the overall police accountability ordinance as opposed to just leaving it in policy.

for you, and it's a really important tool for procedural justice for officers who feel like they didn't have the tools necessary to actually comply with whatever the rule was, or that the rule was ambiguous on its face, and they thought that they were complying with the rules, but then they, turns out, maybe weren't.

And so we really want to be fair in those processes to make sure that there's legitimacy to the work that OPA is doing.

And I think it's definitely caught on.

I think in the department, it's funny now, you know, officers will, you know, say, you know, can you do a management action on X?

Supervisors will say, well, what about a management action?

So I mean, I think they also see it as a way, you know, sometimes I think, yeah.

And I think also it feels like bureaucracy is sometimes intractable.

I think for officers, they feel like, you know, how do we make this change?

How do we effectuate?

And they see OPA at times as a tool to effectuate the changes.

Um, so, um, As you may be aware, any serious and deadly use of force right now by SPD policy is called a type three use of force.

And for all those type three uses of force, the force investigation team, which is a department investigation team, is required to respond to the scene.

When they respond to the scene, they notify OPA and we respond as well.

So we responded this year to 100% of Type 3 incidents.

Generally, I will go and with a supervisor and multiple sergeants.

As I said, you know, as with the use of force, these generally occur at 3 o'clock in the morning on a weekend, which is not always the greatest time to go out at night.

But we, but our staff is really vigilant.

And we're there not only to be taking part in the interviews and to be monitoring the interviews, but also to be monitoring the overall investigation.

You know, for an officer-involved shooting, had the officers been separated?

You know, is evidence being secured?

You know, making sure that things are going right and being that community eye on what's happening.

So this slide crams a lot of what we've been doing that Andrew set out at the beginning of the presentation into one.

We've been exponentially growing our community and stakeholder engagement.

As we mentioned to this committee late last year, we participated in 12 roll calls at different precincts.

And this is really being used to build rapport with officers.

try to understand the perspective of officers and just get out there and engage with police department members.

We also gave nine sergeant skills trainings.

These are two and a half hour presentations at mandated sergeant skills presentation, or I'm sorry, sergeant skills training schools.

We talked to them about procedural justice, about OPA practices and procedures, and made sure that there was some understanding of what we were doing and how we were hoping to engage with them in the future.

We heard in those instances that there was a lack of engagement with OPA in the past.

So that's something we've been trying to focus on is making sure that we're approachable and accessible and that we're open to a dialogue with officers.

We hired three community engagement specialists in 2018. They started at the end of October.

So while this community participation in community events number may actually seem low, it's increased greatly from the previous year.

and we're hoping to increase it even more next year.

So they were just getting started learning about OPA and they've been doing a great job getting out in the community and increasing awareness and understanding in the community of what OPA does so that people can make a complaint when necessary and just have trust that the police department has some oversight.

We also have an email newsletter that goes out to almost 300 people now.

And those are mostly sworn officers.

And it's an opportunity for us to explain certain decisions that Andrew makes and policies that are going on that affect the day-to-day work of officers.

So we're using that as another means of communicating and getting out in front of officers so that there is some understanding of our work.

And finally, Andrew or myself presents at every post BLEA class that comes through.

So after officers, new officers go through the academy, there's a post academy class that focuses on SPD specific policies.

And we try to get in there to every class and make sure that as student officers are starting their journey with the department, they understand what OPA is and we can kind of set expectations at the forefront.

That's all we have.

Thank you so much.

I know we've gone a little bit over, but if there's any questions, we're happy to address them now.

But otherwise, anything that comes up, obviously, we'll provide responses.

Andrew, the only thing that I was going to ask about is the last appendix for the report is Appendix B, and it lists appeals and grievances.

Just tell me a little bit more about that.

what this is, what information, what is this?

Sure.

As part of the ordinance.

That's just a list.

Right.

As part of the ordinance, we're required to report out just on what appeals are currently pending and the status of those appeals.

So basically what these all are is these are all the appeals of sustained findings that are currently exist.

There are different levels of pendency.

You know, some you can see are from 2014. Some are still going through the DRBE, which was eliminated as part of the contracts, but it's obviously they're grandfathered in for these past cases.

Some are going to arbitration.

Really, if you look down, the ones from 2017 are really the ones that are under my watch.

Most of these are just past appeals.

It's a lot, and I think this is obviously something that I know that you've thought a lot about, Council Member.

Yeah, no, I think I really appreciate having the list.

And I think it's important for my colleagues in the public to know that there's not a lot of detail in terms of what the actual thing is that's being appealed or sort of particulars around.

the facts of the case as you investigated it.

But I do want to be really transparent that there are several of these appeals and grievances that are in the disciplinary review board context that, you know, we worked really hard to get rid of the DRB in the new contract negotiations because the DRB was certainly weighted in large favor to to the officer in those cases.

And so there is a high likelihood that we may see an outcome out of these cases that are listed in Appendix B that is not one that we would necessarily see under the new collective bargaining agreement and the new arbitration process, and also probably results that some of us may not be very pleased with in terms of the outcome of those grievances.

appeals processes.

So I just want to be really transparent with the viewing public and with colleagues.

And of course, I know that you all share the same concern and value in terms of understanding and appreciating that because these cases are grandfathered in, it also means that we may see outcomes from these cases that would be outliers in comparison to what the current process is and may not necessarily align with where we want to be.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

And I think one of the things we probably could do better and something we can focus on this upcoming year would be communicating more with complainants so they're aware when their cases are going through the appeal process.

You know, we do baseline communication, but giving more information.

Because I think it definitely feels, I think, for people that it goes into this black hole.

You can see some of these cases have been in appeal for years.

And that's just a function of there's not that many arbitrators.

So it's a good point and certainly I know it's one of public concern and one that's been in the news particularly of late.

Yeah.

Just two very brief questions.

Sure.

When you say appeal, you have three minutes.

Just clarify for me.

Appeal by the officer or appeal by the person in public?

So there is, yeah, there's no right currently, no right.

It was something that was considered as part of the accountability ordinance, but there's no right of a complainant to appeal right now.

So a community member cannot appeal their finding of not sustained, for example, but it's the officer's right to appeal, which is enshrined in the collective bargaining agreements.

Okay.

Thank you.

It's a right that flows directly from a represented union member's right to grieve, disciplinary action.

So because it's connected with a represented employee's labor rights, the right to appeal flows from that represented employee.

Okay, very helpful.

No, go ahead.

And then, my last question was, when we talk about the number of complaints coming to you and the number coming from SPD, and we talked about the various reasons that that might be coming from within the department, I think that's a good thing, right?

That they're coming to you, that the trainings happen, the people know to reach out.

How do we also make sure that we're enforcing it?

If something's happening, what's the accountability to make sure that that action is truly being reported.

Yeah, so I mean, so right now, a couple mechanisms.

We, there is a policy where if you fail to report, you can be investigated and disciplined for that failure.

So, and that happens, you know, if you look in the report, it'll itemize for you.

different allegations, and there is a section that we'll talk about, you know, force reporting, and that's all people that fail to report, either an officer that failed to report or a supervisor that failed to report.

Frankly, the biggest mechanism that we have right now is video, you know, body-worn video.

So when we're doing an intake into a case, right, we're not just focusing on the allegations that were alleged, right?

We're reviewing all the body-worn video, the in-car video, and we're trying to identify, you know, what else went wrong?

What are the other problems?

And we may discover a failure to report You know, generally sergeants and supervisors, and it's not just because they know they're on video, it's because they want to do the right thing, are reporting these things.

It is a culture of reporting, which is a good thing.

You know, I just think what we're trying to reach now is a balance of, you know, what do you want to handle at your end versus sending it over to us.

That makes sense.

Thank you.

Councilmember Pacheco.

First, much appreciation for the work that you all do.

I've actually used your services in mediation specifically.

So any way that I can partner to promote that service is something that I'm tremendously helpful and supportive of.

You just found yourself a volunteer for the mediation program.

I'll go with you to roll call.

Great.

So, question regarding officers with complaints.

Lateral transfers, given that there's a focus within SPD and recruitment of SPD officers that come in through lateral transfers, are they trained with regards to just how the OPA process?

At what point are they trained?

Yeah, that's, I mean, it's a really good question.

So, when laterals come in, they do go through a mini-academy.

So, what we're talking about post-BALEA, like the Post-Basic Law Enforcement Academy, they'll go through that same course.

So, we will speak to them and present to them about what OPA is.

But again, like, the issue that we're seeing is that that is a 35-minute presentation with all the other stuff they have going on, and that's the last they hear of us until they come into our office.

So in that capacity, we are trying to do more work to affirmatively go out there.

Like one thing I'm going to try out starting in May is, I don't have a good name for it, so I'm calling it office hours.

So I'm going to do a 9 a.m.

to 9 p.m.

shift at each precinct throughout the city, and just to be there.

So I'll work remotely, and if officers want to come in and talk to me, whether it's about an old case, about, you know, one of their cases, something I decided that was in the news, really anything I'll be there to have those conversations and I'm hopeful that that'll be sold to them by the chain of command so that they will take advantage of it so I can talk to them about OPA.

I mean a lot of it is you know the emails that we send out we're just trying to educate people about what we do and why.

I do not want someone's first experience with OPA being when they walk in for their interview because at that point it's too late like you should be comfortable with the process and what it is but It's certainly work that we could do better, but, you know, it's enough hours in the day and reaching all these officers.

But laterals, mostly because they have experiences from other departments that may not be good.

There may not have been really an accountability system there.

We do do some work, but we haven't necessarily targeted them specifically, but we could.

And then my follow-up question.

With regard to the roll calls, given that so many of your complaints are coming internally, is 12 roll calls sufficient?

Yeah, I mean, it's a good point.

I mean, really what we're doing is we were trying to go to every single roll call at every watch across every precinct, right?

So there's five precincts, three watches, so 15 roll calls.

We've done 12 of 15. The only ones I haven't done are the 4 a.m.

roll calls, which I'm putting off as long as I can, but I'll go to those.

But that's why I wanted to do the office hours is because it is tough because, you know, people may not be working that day.

You know, it might be an off-court day for one shift that I won't see.

But, you know, is it sufficient?

No, it's not, right?

The problem is I'm trying to balance, you know, going to these roll calls, you know, doing what we do in the community, writing up 515 cases a year, and everything else that's going on.

But we're getting there.

And I think it's a goal for us to keep doing it.

And maybe it's not me.

Maybe it's Ann that goes.

It's our community engagement folks that go.

It's some of our other sworn that go.

It's imperfect.

If you have ideas, let us know.

Literally, we're willing to try anything.

So let us know.

I was going to ask if you target them specifically given where the complaints are coming from.

We don't.

We don't.

But we could.

But we don't currently.

Because what I want to avoid is, you know, southwest precincts, for example, in West Seattle.

I think often they feel like, well, no one ever comes to them.

So I want to spend as much time there as I'm spending in west or north or east.

But certainly if we see targeted trends, like Third Watch West, they're seeing the most complaints, I might go there.

I also do targeted, sometimes I'll have a training issue that I see in a case, and I may say to the supervisors, instead of me just sending a case back and having you train them, I'm gonna come to the roll call with your permission and talk to the officers myself.

So I've done that, and I may do that more.

Again, it's just resource-based.

Well, thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Any other questions or comments?

Okay, great.

Thank you so much to all of you for being with us this morning and for, more importantly, the work that you do every day to keep us all honest.

So appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right, so we are gonna move to our last agenda item.

I wanna recognize that Council Member Bagshaw has joined us.

Thank you so much for being with us.

We are gonna go ahead and do our last item of business on the agenda.

And I'm gonna ask Roxanna to read agenda item five into the record.

And if you are here to present on the lead slide, please make your way up to the table.

Agenda item 5, response to slide 38-2-A-1, 2019 for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, Roxanna.

Okay, well, thank you, everyone, for being with us this morning.

Thank you for your patience as we worked our way through the prior agenda items.

It's good to see all of you here.

We'll go ahead and do a quick round of introductions, so name and your affiliation.

And then I understand that our agenda will be that Greg Goss from Council Central staff will tee up the topic and the issue as it relates to this slide response.

And then Lisa, I think you're gonna give us a little bit more context and detail regarding LEAD and just the need for the database in general.

And then we're gonna hand it over to Seattle IT and the Seattle Police Department to give us their presentation on the actual contents of the slide response, and then we will have questions and answers.

And then Council Member Baggio, I know that you were the primary sponsor of this slide.

If you'd like to take a few moments to provide any opening remarks, I'm happy to provide you that opportunity.

Thank you very much, Council Member Gonzalez.

I want to say thank you, first of all, all of you coming.

And Lisa, I know you've been working with LEAD for us now for, I don't know, better part of a decade.

50 years.

Yeah, at least.

But I also want to acknowledge the work and the support that you're getting from the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office as an example that we know that this is an alternative.

So when we met last year, I think it was October during budget, about the need to have this database, that what was very clear to me is that the police were asking for it as well, that they wanted to have this information that was accessible.

We talked about Allie Franklin's work that she's doing with 311 and Crisis Connections.

I'd like to hear, as we're going through this, how this all connects, because without the data, it's hard to prove that LEAD is working.

And yet we're hearing from the executive's office that they have questions about whether LEAD is working.

So, you know, clearly we have something here that we need to resolve.

And I would, as we're going through this today, like to hear from you about can this particular database that we're talking about be done?

What we need to do, because I know last year you were very frustrated that it was taking as long as it was taking, and the police department was frustrated that they weren't getting the resource support, and yet everybody was saying, we need this.

So I want to acknowledge that and then hear how we've come and how far we've come in the last six months and what we need to do to go forward.

Great.

Thank you so much, Council Member Bagshaw.

Why don't we go ahead and do the round of introductions, and then we will go in the order that I described.

Greg.

Greg Doss, Council Central staff.

Mark Baird, Chief Operating Officer for the Seattle Police Department.

Tim Taylor, I'm a Business Analyst with Seattle IT.

Nancy Richards, Business Analyst Manager with Seattle IT.

Tara Moss, Seattle King County Lead Project Director.

I work with Lisa.

Lisa Dugard, I'm the Director of the Public Defender Association, and we are the Project Manager for the Local Lead Initiative.

Thank you so much for being with us.

Mr. Doss, why don't you go ahead and kick us off?

Yeah, thank you.

So, by way of background, the Statement of Legislative Intent 38282 came about as Councilmember Bagshaw indicated back last October when the budget was being developed by the city council.

At the same time, concurrently, the police department was implementing a records management system, which is a very complicated and long-term endeavor.

And as the council was hearing reports back on that implementation, It became evident that there would be a need for the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Program to communicate somehow with that database or the other way around so that as officers came into contact with lead clients, they would know that that was indeed a lead client and they would have information about how to handle that call.

And there was some dialogue about whether that would be captured in the police RMS system itself or whether that information would reside in a separate database that could be queried by the RMS system.

And it's the latter that wound up being the best scenario.

And so this slide asked that the LEAD program, Seattle IT, and SPD come together, figure out what a LEAD database might look like, how much it would cost, and then specifically, how it would interface with the police records management system so that the police, when they were out working the street, would have information about lead clients.

And it does all of these things, and the police department and the lead program folks in Seattle IT are going to talk about the response.

SPD, Mark Barrett is asked to provide a few introductory comments, so I'll ask if I have I think that is all I have.

Any questions on my overview and then toss it off to him.

Any questions, colleagues or comments?

I'm excited to hear from the police department.

Thanks.

I just want to take a couple of moments and reiterate a couple of Councilmember Bakeshaw mentioned, I think, the first one, which is there is a lot of conversation around analytics and performance metrics as it relates to LEAD.

And there just is, not quite concern, but there's interest in making sure that a database that gets constructed has the ability to capture the appropriate information to be able to contribute to creating those performance metrics.

And the second is that there are number of entities around the city that do case management functions and I think we want to be mindful of How many separate systems may be in existence and whether or not?

there's the ability to get some additional leverage out of something so that we don't have too many siloed or different or counter systems.

Chair, we have a follow-up quick question.

We're going to get there.

Okay.

So I'm going to ask you to hold your questions because I want to go in the order that I outlined and that was slightly out of order, but I will allow that little introductory remark.

I'm going to head over to Lisa next and have Lisa, walk us through, from LEAD's perspective, just give us a little bit more texture and context and detail around the need for this database, and just a little bit more texture to why we're having this conversation in the first place.

And then, Council Member Bagshar, we're going to hear a deep dive on the actual slide response from IET and SPD, and I'm sure that will generate a lot more questions.

Lisa.

Thank you so much.

I want to say first that this has been an incredibly effective and swift process.

Thank you, Council Member Bagshaw, for initiating it with a statement of legislative intent.

Thank you, Seattle IT, for doing fast, excellent work that was incredibly responsive to the needs of really diverse stakeholders, not just in the private sector, the service providers, and us as project managers also.

King County prosecutors and law enforcement.

This is a truly regional strategy that has probably the most diverse array of partners that any challenge could be, you know, that could be tossed into your lap.

You know, make this work for all these people who have distinct and sometimes very non-aligned legal constraints on information that they can share and reporting out obligations.

You did it really fast and really effectively and so it's great.

And what we have now, I think, is A report that explains that this can be achieved, and we'll get into what this is.

This can be achieved, and it has a price tag.

So whether it moves forward really depends on whether the co-owners of LEED want to invest in this.

It's our hope that the answer is yes, because not having it is a real impediment to taking this model to scale and to increased efficacy.

So what LEAD is, LEAD stands for Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion.

It's a strategy by which when it's recognized that, quote unquote, we can't arrest our way out of this problem, which is a view widely embraced when people commit law violations due to behavioral health issues, either mental illness or substance use disorder.

It's not enough to say we can't arrest our way out of the problem.

We do still need to respond to the problem, and law enforcement's a critical piece of that.

And arrests may be made, and it is a public expectation that there be enforcement action.

But that enforcement action doesn't have to lead to jail and prosecution when that is known to be an ineffective strategy as long as the officers have an alternative.

So LEAD provides that alternative.

It allows officers to directly connect in the field.

with highly trained, highly skilled, highly effective case managers and outreach coordinators doing warm handoffs, receiving people who have a complex history, generally of chronic law violations and impacted, often trauma-driven needs that don't get solved overnight.

But that contact is the beginning of a sustained long-term strategy for addressing what is the driver of the person's chronic law violations, and all the while allowing officers to coordinate with case managers and prosecutors so that every additional touch, right?

It's not the last time officers are going to see that person in all likelihood.

So the next time, whether that be tomorrow or in a week or in three months, or on Como, the next time that person is encountered, it's possible to just, rather than sort of undoing all the good work that has been set up by case managers, law enforcement can reinforce that, work with it.

It doesn't lead participation, it's not immunity from future enforcement, but it does allow officers to coordinate that future response optimally with a sustained long-term case management plan.

It's very effective.

People who don't respond well to any other known intervention have been seen to respond very positively to lead engagement.

So, and last comment about what it is, lead almost alone, I think, is a place where we have figured out how to share information.

This is like the Holy Grail, right?

We need to break down silos and share information.

But a lot of information that law enforcement holds is protected by the Criminal Records Privacy Act against sharing.

And a lot of information that behavioral health providers hold is protected by HIPAA and other state and federal laws and regulations against sharing.

So, putting those two systems together is very unusual and over time, and I won't go down the rabbit hole of how, but we have figured out a way, all of these partners, to share information as needed in order to coordinate.

But it's done by hand at this point.

So, by email, by text, by bilateral phone call.

And that worked okay when we were talking about 50 people or 100 people.

But LEAD now has more than 600 active participants.

And if the police department could refer everybody that they have identified who would be appropriate for LEAD, it would, you know, be well north of 1,000 very rapidly, probably headed much further than that.

So we're at a point where we cannot efficiently share information, nor can we efficiently report out.

data on what the program is doing.

And it's not because the data don't exist, but it's just because, you know, every request for information is a by hand poll.

So you all are familiar during budget, you ask us things and we produce things and we prioritize that and it takes about 24 hours.

But optimally, any council or mayoral or King County executive or King County prosecutor, budget analyst or policy analyst who felt like it could get up at 3 a.m., crack open their LEAD database and ask the questions that they really want to know the answer to and get them back in real time.

For that to be true, the information about how LEAD participants are being managed and what the plan is, and what the past contacts have been, that all needs to live in one place.

How that relates to SPD, in all of our ideal state, every sworn officer, and for that matter, civilian employee of the police department who encountered a lead participant could find out that the person is a lead participant, and get key updated information about who that person's case manager is, if there is kind of time sensitive information like they have 72 hours to get into housing and if they miss that window, they're gonna slide way back down a list and that might not come up for them again for two years.

So they would know that in the field, they'd be able to immediately do a smart and effective thing that is an alternative to booking into jail because they just don't have the necessary information to do something responsive and immediate that is different.

The concept that Greg and Mark alluded to is for us optimal that that encounter in the field triggers a query to a database and pulls information back that is immediately available by mobile data terminal or smartphone or any other portal through which an officer is getting information or to dispatch.

That provides just that immediately actionable information that would guide an alternative response.

So a database would further transparency and accountability.

The Seattle Times editorialized in the last couple days that diversion programs need more transparency and accountability.

We concur, not because we're not accountable and transparent, but because there's like a volume and timing issue about providing data to the stakeholders that participate.

So on demand and not by hand.

Allowing governing partners to have clear view into what we're doing.

Make suggestions for redirection or improvement if you think that's, you are one of those co-owners.

So if you think that's appropriate.

Say that sentence again.

The governing partners in LEAD, who include the City Council, the Mayor, Seattle Police Department, City Attorney, and their counterparts on the county side, the Executive, the King County Prosecutor, the Sheriff, and the King County Council, as well as a couple of community civil rights partners, All could have their own access into this pool of information, run reports, answer their own questions.

And then operational partners would have real-time access to know what's going on with individuals.

And also be able to look at case- Your point is that if we have this database and it's as rich as we need it to be, then as policy makers, we have an opportunity to look at that data to make evidence-based, data-driven decisions as it relates to the LEAD program.

And operationally, for those of you who are, for those actual users of the system, people who are actually on the ground doing the work in LEAD, it eases the burden on them operationally in terms of being able to you know, track and monitor where the successes and opportunities might be as it relates to deployment of the program.

Yeah, exactly.

And optimizes the choices that each partner makes to improve the likelihood that the behavior of the person in lead that they're working with improves.

And yeah, so to remove all the barriers that occur just through lack of information exchange.

The question of other sort of kindred initiatives and whether they also need, you know, a platform for information sharing, I mean, undoubtedly, this is a known, you know, this is like, this is the brass ring of local policymaking on this issue.

I think we are quite a bit further, partly because we have the architecture of information sharing, even if it's analog right now.

that some others have not fully worked out, but also, and we have a high volume of participants already enrolled, but showing that this can be done hopefully will be really motivating and inspiring to others that, you know, this is all within our grasp.

I think because Seattle IT did such a great job and we have a pretty good idea of what the cost is, you know, it's not for free, but it's not unachievable.

I think this will go a long way toward building confidence that we can deliver what everyone wants, which is responsive, transparent, accountable, and effective response to these problems.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge our colleague, Tim Candela, in the audience, who did a lot of the groundwork with Seattle IT to make sure that what was designed is going to actually meet the needs of this diverse array of operational and governing stakeholders.

Thanks so much.

Great, thank you so much.

Okay, now we're gonna shift gears and we're gonna hear from SPD and Seattle IT on the substance of their response and council members should feel free to ask questions as we're going along.

Who would like to get us going?

Well, I can talk about, from SPD's perspective, and I think Lisa did a pretty good job of pointing it out, that our real interest is being able to provide information to an officer when they encounter somebody who may say, hey, I'm in the LEAD program, or they may wonder if they're in the LEAD program.

Right now, we don't really have an effective way to find out if that is, in fact, true.

So our interest is in being able to make a query, you know, somewhat similar to like a warrants check on, hey, is this person in LEAD, and getting back that very type of information that Lisa outlined so that an officer can take an appropriate step with the individual that they have encountered.

Thank you.

I want to say thank you very much to SPD and our partners.

For us in IT, we have had a very good relationship in being able to push this forward.

Our goal in this was to be able to identify what was possible, what would be required to be able to fulfill those.

And so in generality, we have some understandings, and then we have some scope for costing for us to consider as we move forward.

So Tim has done most of that legwork, and I'd like to have him speak to that.

So, one of our goals, I think, were primarily were to provide PDA and the LEAD program with the tools that they needed to move forward in their journey towards a solution for their technology needs.

Our documentation that we provided was based on the principle of being vendor neutral, even though they were engaged with a particular vendor when we began our engagement with them.

We wanted to make sure that the documentation we provided was applicable towards either that vendor or moving forward with other individual vendors or moving forward with a single solicitation of multiple vendors.

So as part of the conversations I had with PDA project managers and representatives from their partner organizations, I developed a set of business requirements that specify what's needed in the solution so that those requirements can be taken to any vendor really.

And they have the building blocks they need to know.

We need this and we need this and we need this.

I also developed some, what's called business process flow documentation for their desired future state.

It describes what the lead referral process looks like for both arrest diversions and for social contact referrals.

and it describes what the integration with other partner systems might look like.

So in terms of the actual response to the slide, we recommend that the lead database be developed based on what's called a customer relationship management platform or CRM.

That provides sort of the database capabilities.

The platform should also include workflow processing capability.

Lisa referred to all the different communications that they use between partners, the different methods and channels to communicate status and things like that.

Such a system would provide notifications kind of proactively towards people that needed to know when they needed to know.

And it would help move things through the inception process, the induction process into the program in a measured manner.

We've come up with some estimates for requirements of cost based on the work that we did, and also based on the work that the vendor DXC technology did.

We prepared a couple of different views into those estimations.

The first recommendation was for a vendor-only implementation without added support of a project delivery team.

Implementation and support costs for the first three years were estimated at roughly $270,000 to nearly $500,000 for a project with a six to nine month implementation time frame.

What does that mean to people on the ground, to the police, to those of us that are having to make budget decisions?

Right.

If you did what you just recommended, would we have a system that LEED could use?

Indeed.

Yes, so such a system would meet the needs as we've developed, as the solution was envisioned by PDA and their partners.

So when you said 270,000, is that for the acquisition of the software alone?

So that would include vendor implementation services, licensing costs associated with the software, basically test and production software environments, interface and integration and development.

basic user and administrator training, vendor travel expenses, and all the subscription licensing.

So if $270,000 we could have the software, people could be trained, it would be implemented, it would connect with the police, it would talk to the police officers database as well as for the case managers on the ground?

Well, rather than talking to the police database, I think what the vision was is to have a query.

from SPD systems and the systems that the officers are already working in to this lead database to return back the information that they need to make informed decisions.

Okay, but they're talking to each other.

The way we envisioned it would not be as a two-way communication.

It would be as a single query.

So you could pull data from the existing SPD database?

SPD would pull data from the lead database.

Sorry, the other way around.

Got it.

Yeah.

And just in the form of that query to return that immediate information for an officer, it would not be sucking data into our RMS, but it would be getting a return from it.

Thank you.

In order that they have that information to work from at the moment.

Sure.

Could I just clarify?

The next step could be, but it's not required, that SPD could actually make referrals into LEAD through RMS and then push that to the database.

That is a TBD.

I think it's very clear that that option would be there and we'll consider later, or SPD will consider later, whether that is the way that makes most sense to actually just directly make referrals.

That's not a...

current, we're doing that by hand and we can continue to do that by hand for a while, while they get their new records management system up and running, sort of stabilized in the field, everybody trained up and using it.

But it's possible that referrals could be made using a form within RMS that we would then get in the, you know, just that would dump into the database.

That's a separate add-on.

Okay, well, let me just ask this.

So, Officer Baird finds an individual and talks to somebody in Belltown that he believes would be appropriate for your program.

So, does he then send a note to you through his record management system that says, okay, we got Bob on the ground, or we know who Bob is.

We believe he's appropriate for this system.

What do you do with that?

Or what does he do with that at that point?

That how SPD puts information into the database is still the project that the department is holding on.

They want to do the first step first, set up the database where they can pull information to use operationally that comes from the database, keep making referrals as we currently do.

And then consider whether, and I hope I'm a little bit speaking out of turn here, and Mark, correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that the question is held open whether or not they would then want to make referrals through their RMS that could plug into the database.

And this is not something they've committed to doing, but it's a question that remains open.

If I could just have one quick follow-up.

Mark, I've just designated you as Officer Baird.

So you are outside and you find somebody.

What kind of information are you seeking from the LEAD database?

What do you want to know that you don't have access to now?

Whether or not that individual that I've encountered is, in fact, in LEAD.

Typically, what an officer could hear is they come in contact with somebody, individual says, oh, I'm in LEAD.

We don't have any way to know if, in fact, that is true, if they really do have a case manager, if they're really participating in any active way.

And so this is closing that gap of if I've made contact, for instance, with you and you say, well, I'm in LEAD, I can find out if you're in LEAD.

I can find out your case manager.

I can find out, as Lisa pointed out, perhaps whether or not you're just about to get some housing.

And if I make an arrest choice, whether or not that would impact that so I could make an informed choice.

And perhaps, you know, the last time you were actively engaged with your case manager, it would close that gap in not being able to know any of that information.

All we have right now is somebody saying that.

There's no way to verify that.

Councilmember, may I give a real-world example of this?

So you guys funded north expansion last year, if you may remember.

We estimated about 50 referrals.

One of the data points that is very important to me is, is officers, law enforcement invested in this program?

Are they invested in LEAD?

The way you can tell that is if they're referring people into the program.

If the program doesn't work, they're not going to refer people, right?

than to do something else.

So right now we have, we estimated 50 for a year.

We have over 200 referrals.

We're not at our one year mark yet.

So that's how invested North Precinct is in terms of lead.

So we are also trying to find some individuals that they've referred through social contact.

That means it wasn't arrest diversion.

It's like, hi, nice to meet you.

I think you may be a good program.

Let me go talk to my boss about this, talk to case managers, get more information from the prosecutor's office if you're approved.

you'll get an outreach coordinator.

So we have about 99 approved referrals.

They're not intake, they aren't lead clients.

The outreach coordinators are running around North Precinct, which is not a small precinct, which I'm reminded by all the time by law enforcement, trying to find these individuals.

So then they have sat down and they've talked to law enforcement to prioritize those individuals and say, who are people that you're encountering 20 or 40 times in the past two years?

So they're having contact with law enforcement all over the precinct.

Not everyone is LEAD trained, only in certain high-focus areas in North Precinct, right?

So now they've identified 38 people.

Prosecutors are working to see when their court dates are, so maybe case managers can talk to them and reach out to them there, because these individuals don't even know they're in the LEAD program yet, even though they've been approved.

They're going to do a ride-along with law enforcement and try to find these individuals.

Everyone's working really hard to get these people taken in, that the community sees this as a benefit, law enforcement sees this as a benefit, and prosecutors.

But currently, because even though they're having contact with other law enforcement, there's nothing jumping up saying, talk to your case manager.

Or the case managers can't look up just right off They have to search emails to see if that person has a court date.

And if that court date changed, the prosecutor has to email that case manager to go chase down that individual.

So on the ground, those are some of the benefits that this database could provide.

That's very helpful.

Thank you.

So some of the other benefits that we talked about were the ability to have enhanced reporting capabilities.

Right now, the way that things operate today with the disparate lists and Excel spreadsheets and things participants in the program that each precinct, that each partner maintains separately, it's really hard to report or to gather data across all that information.

So this would provide a centralized database, so a single source of truth.

that you could go and then develop reporting capabilities there.

One of the set of requirements that we thought was most important was the flexibility to be able to add new data fields to reports and to create new reports themselves.

As time goes on, there may be different things that people want to know about the program.

So that's all kind of built into this.

system that we designed as well.

And I just want to clarify that this option that you referred to where you laid out all of the different things that 270 would purchase, you did give a range in the slide response of 270 to 490. So I just want to make sure that our budget chair who is attending the committee appreciates that that's a scale and not just the 270. Yeah, that 270 is the low end.

And it was unclear to me from the response what the variables are that contribute to these options going from a low end to the higher end.

And for each one of the options, there is a low end to a high end.

So perhaps you can give us a little bit more clarity around what those variables are and what is contributing to the spread.

Sure.

There's a built-in, a certain amount of variability in cost associated with different bids that different vendors might offer.

We start with a certain set, whatever we have, information that we have available.

In this case, we estimated at 25% below the initial estimate to indicate the lower end of the range.

And if you estimate that from whom?

Our initial basis was DXC Technologies estimate.

So their individual estimate was about $300,000 for the first year implementation costs.

Their quote was also based on the fact that they had a six month implementation time frame.

So you're paying for vendor services for the entire time that they're doing their development work and things like that.

This upper end of the range also includes the possibility of taking as long as nine months to implement the project.

Is all of this Microsoft software being implemented by a third party vendor?

It's not necessarily Microsoft.

We didn't settle on a single vendor or provider.

We want to make clear that we're looking for customer relationship management capabilities.

There's a number of vendors that provide that kind of software.

There's a number of standards that Seattle IT maintains related to those types of software.

So maybe an inartful question.

Is the underlying software that you're requesting a Microsoft product or are there multiple software vendors that could provide the underlying software?

that you need.

Indeed the second.

So there are multiple software vendors that could provide the software that's needed.

So the recommendations that are included in the slide are focused on what the database technology needs are without regard to a specific vendor.

So this will provide a sort of full suite of opportunities and options for for us to consider in a budget process that aren't attached to a particular vendor but are more focused on the technological needs of the program.

Is that correct?

Exactly.

One of the things that we were looking for was to identify what capabilities did we need to have, much like Lisa's conversation about what do we want to start with, what is our current state, and where do we want to move forward, what capabilities might we need in a future so that as we look to solution selection, we'll have a variety of opportunities and we'll have the underlying core, I'll say, requirements to make that informed business decision.

That's helpful.

Councillor Mosqueda.

Thank you so much.

I apologize if you've already commented on this, but as we look at the various options, I love what you just said, solution selection without a problem.

As we identify the solutions and we move forward with one of the various options that you've outlined, one question that I have is, is this six to nine months after we put money forward in the budget, or is it six to nine months beginning now if you started to do the build out?

As soon as a vendor is selected at a contract assigned at those types of things, once they begin their development work on the solution, it would be a six to nine month time frame estimated.

Okay.

And what's the timeline that you would need in order to select a vendor?

Assuming that we get all the money that we need, because it grows on trees, and we get it in the budget.

It would probably depend largely on the vendor selection process that's used.

If you look towards the end of this response, we sort of described three different options of how PDA could proceed.

And again, we wanted to make sure that we supported them in any of those options.

They can move forward with DXC technology if they feel that they meet their needs and if they feel that they are You know, financially a reasonable estimate and things along those lines.

They could also investigate the ability for other additional individual vendors to meet their needs.

So they've already had an engagement or two with individual vendors.

Sometimes I believe led to frustration and sometimes just didn't end up completing the process, right?

The third option would be to submit something like what we call a request for proposal, which is a formal solicitation process that allows proposals and cost estimates and duration estimates from multiple vendors at once, and it'll allow for the objective evaluation between those multiple vendors.

And Lisa, have you formulated an opinion about a preference in terms of the process question related to identifying a vendor?

So we work for the lead governing body, which the council sits on along with the other stakeholders that I named earlier.

So it's really the policy coordinating group's decision.

What we would recommend to them, I suspect, is that first, it would be optimal if, you know, there's been so much discussion about locally routed IT companies helping in dealing with issues of homelessness, public order, there are a variety of configurations in which that help has been offered.

Microsoft approached the King County Prosecutor's Office, which is actually how this one bid sort of came into being, offering to help.

It would be really fantastic and optimal if the public officials who sort of co-own LEAD were to ask for this.

This is a really concrete, not that enormous way in which a donation could be made that would really speed us down the road and maybe model a way to make a difference.

to build a regional integrated approach to these problems that starts to inspire hope and legitimacy.

So if that could happen, you know, that's a role for the Policy Coordinating Group and potentially for you all.

If we're paying, if somebody's going to pay, then I think it would be our recommendation that we do do an RFP and identify a plausible amount that you're willing to spend, that the sort of whoever's funding this is willing to spend.

and run a competition advised by Seattle IT so that you know you're making a wise and prudent investment.

This is well beyond our skill set, which is why it was so valuable that you enlisted Seattle IT to help us.

We are not well positioned to assess whether the price is reasonable and the product is going to work, and we can't do this twice.

So an RFP, if it's not donated, an RFP seems like the prudent road.

Great.

Council Member Bagshaw?

On your page, 1, 2, 3.

Not numbered.

OK, so 1, 2, 3, page 4. Deborah Juarez would be chewing you out now.

There's a subparagraph here, B, that says, for an implementation that includes project management and business analyst resources, in addition to everything noted above, cost is estimated between $434,000 and $739,000.

Talk to me about B and A.

As budget chair, if this is a priority for us, what am I asking for?

Am I asking for 2A or 2B?

Right.

So 2A assumes the lowest cost, but it also has, we believe, the least chance of effectiveness and success.

With option B, what we add is professional, technical, project management and business analysis resources.

You can see listed there some of the services that that would provide.

That could be from an organization like Seattle IT, it could be from another consultancy firm, but we believe that those services will greatly enhance the abilities to meet success.

Yeah.

Well, I would say just to my colleagues, I don't want to even fool around with something that you don't think is going to be successful.

This is way too critical.

And it's not just LEAD.

I think this is the point that we've been talking about, which is LEAD is a tool.

And as Lisa said earlier, it does not provide immunity for people.

But it is a tool, an alternative to make people better, feel better, be better.

and help get them out of the criminal justice system where they actually can be thriving again.

I don't want something that's half-baked.

I don't want something that is going to cost the taxpayers a quarter of a million dollars and not work.

I would much rather have us identify what software you recommend or software products and recommend a group of people that could do the work.

This is the work you're looking for, and move forward with a rational plan.

So I would hope that coming out of your recommendation that we have agreement that what we want is something that is going to promote the best interests of the individuals on the street, the taxpayers who are paying for it, and a result that gets us out of the spin cycle, which is where I feel we've been.

That makes perfect sense to me.

Yeah.

And I think what Lisa is suggesting is that we might be able to, our greatest savings to the taxpayer might be to identify a public-private partnership with so many of the technology companies that are in our region that might be able to meet the core functions needed by the program in order to stand up the database.

That would be, I think, a win-win situation if we can find a path to identifying that public-private partnership that allows us in our budget to use taxpayer dollars for other aspects of what would be needed to be layered on top of the technology such as I think there was a project manager that was identified that's an actual real human that isn't funded yet that, you know, we could utilize our limited resources in a much more strategic way to leverage that technology and I'm happy to be a partner in those conversations for IT and the PDA if you all find that it would be helpful.

I think it's a matter of us coalescing and perhaps identifying our relationships with folks in some of our local technology companies and making a request for a strategic public-private partnership in a program that is, I believe, successful and that I believe is actually strongly favored by members of our community and certainly by folks who are utilizing the program to be diverted from our criminal justice system.

One of the, we haven't commented on the great opportunity presented by the fact that the King County Sheriff's Office and Seattle PD will be using the same records management system, so building a database that can be queried by Mark 43 kind of instantly accomplishes a unification of strategy between the Sheriff's Office, which uses LEAD, and SPD.

So it's really a good time to make something partner with Mark 43. That's about to be really the regional records management system.

So county, city, private kind of matching approach could really be very well-timed.

Yeah.

Thank you for that.

I'm sure that we will follow up with you offline to find out who the points of contact should be that we should be engaging to have that conversation.

Council Member Bekshaw.

So I know you brought Mark 4 up.

And I'm glad to hear that it's continuing to work and that our police department and the sheriff will be coordinating.

This whole data coordination strikes me as being like one of those things that absolutely has to be done.

So I'm wondering if I'm going to shift back to you, Chair.

We received a memo from Mike Fong dated April 22nd.

And one of the sentences here is, there is strong interest on the part of the executive to minimize risk of redundancy or boutique technological solutions in isolation of the broader context of potential IT needs.

I think we all agree with that.

You know, we don't want to be wasting funds.

We don't want things that we have to duplicate.

But I'm wondering whether We've got the support of your office, of the police department, to really work on this coordinated effort.

And if so, if we can have a strategy that is done by September 1st, so when we're looking at our budget and we can work with the executive to make sure that the money is in her budget, but also if We can do this in a collaborative way.

I don't want it to be a council versus executive or IT versus the police sort of response.

We've got to get this together.

So does anybody have any idea about what the executive is looking at here?

I will look to the executive departments to provide us some insight as to that.

Minimize risk and redundancy.

I think the concern, and I think as the chair talked about getting together with a partnership to perhaps move this along, it's the idea that some of the other elements that do case management might not be forgotten along the way too, whether or not that's consideration for future enhancements to be able to bring them in or if they're considered along the way, but I imagine Many of the people that we're talking about that are under case management with LEAD also touch some of these other elements that relate to city-related case management entities.

And it would make some sense to have a kind of a coordinated place where that case management is done to be able to take a look at not only efficiencies but performance metrics.

I appreciate that perspective and that, long-term strategic goal, as I'm hearing it described.

I also, on the flip side, acknowledge that the LEAD program, I think, is different than our ordinary case management needs and software needs around, you know, making sure that we are collecting appropriate data for people who are experiencing homelessness throughout the system.

And I think there's a risk of conflating this database, which is fundamentally about diversion from a criminal justice system with our suite of of services that we provide in the area of homelessness.

And so while it's true that many of the individuals who are participants in LEAD may be experiencing homelessness, I see the LEAD program as fundamentally different in many ways.

So I worry about taking the approach of, well, we're going to fix the overarching technology needs for homelessness services at the city before we're willing to stand up and meet the what seems to be pretty clear and simple technology needs of a discrete program.

I think, I worry about taking that approach.

It seems to me to be overly judicious and sort of overcomplicated and overly bureaucratic approach to what seems to me to be a pretty simple, thing for us to do in a very narrow body of work that we're currently engaging in that really relates to the Seattle Police Department.

and one small agency.

I have three quick thoughts.

One, appreciate and concur that there's something unique about when police officers have probable cause to make an arrest and choose not to, that's a unique, it's not crisis intervention, it's really a pretty unique decision that requires a firm basis, right?

That you know where the person is going and you have a lot of information about the decision.

the officer is able to rely on the divert to what, the receiving system.

Prosecutors similarly, if you're walking into court and you're advocating for something that is based on information gained from this partnership, you need to have a strong level of reliance on that information.

And so we are really asking our law enforcement partners to do things differently because it's more effective.

In crime reduction, they need information to make those choices and feel like the ground is not gonna fall out from under them because they just didn't know something.

So that's one point.

And it's not to say that other people don't need information exchange, but the specific needs here are pretty acute.

But additionally, I think it would be wise to negotiate a contract with whoever's gonna provide this technology that provides for modular adaptation, right?

So we're going to do this thing and potentially have an ability to procure add-on extensions of this that make sense in the context of another program.

Maybe it doesn't have all the same partners, but so if this works well, you know, sort of, exploring the road in a way that may illuminate what makes sense for these other partnerships.

But finally, to the extent that we were talking about case management and behavioral health, a population with behavioral health needs, what we are finding increasingly is that King County as the behavioral health organization and care providers can see into a pool of information that is very useful.

We cannot see that.

We're not behind that firewall.

Law enforcement can't see behind that, but our case management partners can.

And so they are increasingly sharing information.

And to Council Member Bagshaw's point about crisis connections and the building of a single diversion portal, there's a lot of potential to put these pieces together.

And the LEAD database will only enhance that because that is giving, if our case managers can see all of that, then they are talking to law enforcement partners who get the benefit of all of that.

So I think it will increase the intelligence of our whole system to start by having this key partnership be more aware of information that they need at critical decision points.

A key word that you just said was modular add-ons.

So that I think this is part of the response to, no, we don't want to duplicate anything.

We're not trying to be a boutique all by ourselves database.

We want something that can be shared.

And what you were saying about the case managers, it also comes back to our low acuity work.

And I understand that we will be able to move forward this year with the low acuity project that all of us had worked so hard last year to get online.

I think that the public is crying out for this, and goodness knows whether you're looking at Como or Scott Lindsey's report or all of the articles that have been written about all of this, we're looking for solutions.

We want the city, you know, set interface.

We keep talking about it.

Criminal justice reform.

But more housing is needed and more money into mental health and behavioral health.

The tools have got to be available to help us coordinate this.

So I just want to say thank you to all of you who have been working on it.

And just my fervent hope and desire is that we can get this funded, frankly, and identified before budget starts in October.

because I keep looking at my watch.

I'm talking about another seven months here on council, and I want to see some results, and this is one of them.

So thank you, thank you.

We're selling the naming rights of the database.

Thank you.

The Sally Bagshaw database.

Thank you very much.

You know, I think we're going to close up here because we're close to 15 minutes over the allotted time, and I want to be respectful of everybody's time.

But I do want to pick up on a thread that Council Member Bagshaw put out there, which is how I believe that just like her, that the public is really crying out for us to get serious about addressing these issues that are directly related to to the work that LEAD does.

It is such an important tool for us to be able to really rise to the occasion to meet some of the crime and disorder concerns that folks have while also meeting the needs of people who are who are really suffering and our solution to date has been to just funnel people into jail and the criminal justice system.

That is not a solution and it continues to put us in a situation where we are continuing to perpetuate the status quo of criminalizing people who are experiencing homelessness or suffering from addiction.

This is a clear solution for us to support that allows us to make a difference in this area.

And I believe that people who have elected us are demanding that we rise to the occasion.

One.

Two is this city council continues to be accused about its lack of willingness to support tools that will allow police officers to do their work and to do it effectively.

This database, as far as I can tell, is the tool that officers need to be able to do their work effectively and not be accused of falsely arresting or not doing anything or having their hands tied to being able to not arrest people or divert people off of the streets into the help that they need.

This is our opportunity as a city council to clear the record that we are supportive of this tool, which will provide a tool directly to officers to be able to make those connections and address the crime and disorder that is occurring on the street while also addressing the human suffering of people who are having these experiences.

So I feel very strongly that The city council needs to continue to support this database tool to allow officers to be able to do the job that they want to do.

And to move away from that now is a mistake, and I don't support moving away from it to the extent that that's what's going to happen.

So I got a little fired up about that, but I feel pretty strongly about that.

Obviously you do, not a prepared script.

But thank you.

I also want to acknowledge that there has been so much written about how the police say their hands are tied.

And this is so frustrating to all of us because we know we're trying to do the best we can to both take care of people who are on the street, but also to take care of the neighbors who are saying, man, you just can't let people keep breaking in and stealing stuff and buying drugs.

Whatever that conflict is, this is a step forward that supports the program that not only, Lisa, you've been working on for the better part of your lifetime, it seems.

But that our King County prosecuting attorney, our city's attorney are wanting us to do, and it's not like it's either or.

It's an and.

It's always an and.

They have options.

This gives them one more option and one more choice that I think is working.

So let's go.

Yeah, and Tara's point around like 200 referrals in the North End already.

Those referrals are being made by officers, make no mistake, and that is where the referrals come from.

They're not gonna refer people to a program that they don't believe in, that they don't think is legitimate.

Clearly, our officers believe that LEAD is a legitimate, helpful tool to address some of the things that they are encountering every day in the field, And we are dragging our feet on what I think is a pretty simple technological fix to make sure that the program continues to work and that it is meeting the needs of the officers who are going to be primary users of this tool.

So I made these remarks not as a And that is a insult or criticism of the Seattle Information Technology Department or SPD.

I'm actually advocating for you all in my remarks because I really do, I mean, I think, you know, just the comments around how disconnected officers are from being able to verify whether the person they're engaging with, either in a social context sense or otherwise, is just not fair to them.

We're making their job that much harder, and at the same time, while we're making the job harder for officers, we're also doing an incredible disservice to the people who could be legitimately engaged in the LEAD program and begin to move on to a better place.

So I hope that we can all continue to work together on this and that we can do that with a sense of urgency and with sort of a...

And I think that's where we need to anchor in knowing that this is the right direction for us now.

So those are all of my sentiments on this issue for now.

And let's work towards option 2B together.

And I just want to say what she just said.

This is in no way a complaint about you all.

This is thanking you for the work that you've done and the coordination.

May I just add one more data point, which is that we expanded to SOTO a couple months ago, about a month ago, and our first referral was from a captain.

That's how dedicated the police department is right now with this program.

And we have multiple rolling in ever since then.

And I want to thank all of the officers who see this as a viable tool and option, and who continue to share their experiences, their positive experiences with the program.

And I think that those are important data points for us to have as members of the public and as members of the city council.

So I really appreciate your all's continued effort and collaboration.

This babe has come a long way since it first started.

And I think we're in a really positive space right now.

And we just need to be really serious about keeping up the momentum.

the sense of urgency that I continue to hear from officers who feel like they don't have viable tools at their disposal is real.

And I believe it's one of the contributing factors to the low morale in the police department.

And this is one of our tools available to us now to begin to turn the corner there.

So that being said, I don't think, does anybody else have anything else to say before we adjourn?

No, great.

So this was our last agenda item.

I just want to remind the viewing public that we will have a special convening of this committee on this Friday at 1 o'clock.

12 o'clock.

Over the noon hour, it will be a lunch and learn.

We will be hosting Puget Sound Regional Council and Transportation Choices Coalition, FutureWise, Climate Choices, and others at the table to hear about the Puget Sound Regional Council's Vision 2050, which is a plan around regional growth.

And we're going to hopefully be able to center the conversation not just on what that regional growth plan is, but really center center that conversation and equity and making sure that those folks who are furthest away from opportunity continue to be part of our region from housing to transportation.

So really looking forward to hosting that Lunch and Learn conversation here in Chambers.

That's noon this Friday, April 26th.

And we look forward to seeing some of you there if you are interested.

With that being said, this meeting is adjourned.

Thank you.

you